Week of January 12 - 18, 2020

Highlights:

Spiritual

What a wonderful Sacrament Meeting we had today! We had a mission farewell for a young man who is newer to our ward. (His family recently moved into a rental home. Dad was a Phoenix Police Officer and retired after 20 years on the force, and is now completing classes to qualify to enter medical school, so the family - husband, wife and three teenagers - are renting until they move to go to med school). What a Spirit-filled meeting we had. This young man has such a strong testimony of the gospel and of the Book of Mormon, and he had the strength of both sides of the family attending our meeting. We know both sets of grandparents (one currently in our ward and one from when we first moved out here). It was so awesome to see adults with kids who we first knew as little kids.
Relief Society was also very good as we had a lesson about listening for and acting on promptings.

I attended the temple on Tuesday morning and was able to sit in the Celestial Room and ponder for a while in the quiet. Dad attended sessions at the temple on Wednesday and Thursday nights.

I completed listening to general conference talks for the fourth time through and began the fifth time through. I also started reading the February Ensign Magazine. I truly enjoyed studying the Come Follow Me lesson this week, including the Book of Mormon videos that coincide with them. When I completed the CFM reading, I continued the reading in the Book of Mormon I had started on my own.

I have indexed 1079 records and reviewed 7090 records so far this year.

Family

The Wilkins Family

Happy Birthday to Sam on Monday. This is how they celebrated, as shared by Allison...

"My sweet Sam turned 6 on Monday. I had so much fun eating lunch with him at school and seeing him with his friends. That night we had homemade pizza, opened presents and ate Reese's peanut butter cup cake (his fave treat).

Sam is so much fun. Everyone at school tells us he is the only kid to walk around with a giant smile all day long. He has so much fun with his siblings, loves playing pranks and still cuddles with me regularly. His most favorite thing is giving gifts to others... it will be hard to convince him to spend his birthday money on himself. ❤️ We all adore this guy. Happy Birthday, Sam!"

The Ethan Rice Family

Kaylee lost another tooth this week.

I will be attending her dance recital in early May, so I got plane tickets to travel there. 

The Doran Rice Family

Happy Birthday to Kooper on Monday!

They had a good week other than Kooper getting sick at the end of the week.

Morgan

No news from Morgan this week.

Kayty

Kayty had a good week at work with more overtime which gave her money to buy more black market insulin in Gilbert on Friday night until she can get into a doctor and get a prescription. She ended up working Saturday too. 

The Nathan Rice Family

Happy Birthday to Nathan on Tuesday. This family has been struggling with illness after illness so they are just staying away and hunkering down. 

Dad's Garden

Dad still gets and gives tons of oranges to anyone who wants them. Our Ruby Red Grapefruit Tree is full of grapefruit too. New Key Limes are setting as more are coming off. There will be lots of key lime juice this year if they get to full size. Snow peas are full of blossoms and it seems the tomatoes are surviving. Dad planted them the old fashioned way in a few spots around the yard. We have had such difficulty with disease that we are trying something new. There are even tomato plants by my locked up hut. 

Family History
I wanted to try to insert some memories and things I discover from both Dad's side of the family and mine in this portion of our blog. We were so busy when our kids were growing up that there was not time taken to share much of any family history. I hope the things we share will give all of us a better knowledge of the past. Plus, good memories shared follow my theme of "watering what I want to grow."

Something interesting happened this week. I received one of those emails from Ancestry.com referring to one of my relatives. It was an obituary of Samuel Rhoad Kew.

My father was William Allan Kew. His father was William Arthur Kew (the William A Kew in this obituary mentioned above) and his father was Samuel Rhoad Kew. I never knew my grandfathers, since they had died before I was born and no one really spoke about them. Here, though, is the obituary, stating that this great grandfather of mine was a letter carrier in Chicago for 25 years! Here is a picture of him in his postal uniform.

 He also must have been a Free Mason, since that is where his funeral occurred.

Other highlights
The purple, teal and white Christmas tree has remained illuminated all this week and brought me such a joy every day.

Dad has been diligent on the yard weeds and seems to be keeping them under control.

With Amber's encouragement, I got grout paint and painted the floor grout in the kids' bathroom. I have scrubbed and struggled for years with this white grout or non-white grout, and hopefully, this is a good solution. It took hours and hours, but it is looking pretty good.

My other pics did not come out. If you look at the far right, you can see what my grout looked like in places before (and I scrub this floor three times a week!) This is after painting, before I go in and use acetone to clean off the black tiles. I completed the initial paint and clean late Saturday, and then repainted a few grout joints Saturday night. The true "after" pic will come next week.)

I finally got to visit my dear friend and former co-cub scout leader, Angie Day. It had been such a long time since we just sat and visited and I enjoyed every moment of the two hours. 

I visited Nano on Monday and got her prescriptions under control. I also canceled many doctors' appointments since she loves her new home visit physicians. She has been very teary-eyed this week, but I think that is just a side effect of her meds and that will subside. Scott talks to her on the phone a lot and will take her to her favorite Mexican food on Sunday for lunch.

We were part of an awesome group that cleaned our church building early Saturday morning. Four more seasoned couples did a ton of great work.

Just probably a silly side note, but when each and every one of my children's birthdays come, I sit and remember that day. Yes, I am not too old to remember that most important and most difficult day of my life. No baby comes easy, and nine months of care and worry culminate in birth that is never the same two times in a row. I have memories of where we parked, my room, sometimes even the nurses' name, my doctors or the resident doctors who would deliver, and lots of things about each individual baby and the process and joy of your coming into the world and holding you each in my arms.